Dynmanic Contour for Oring Grooves and Bowl Cuts.

[crazy^millman]

Okay thought I would share something that would be helpful to others. I am currently programming some parts with Bowl undercut shapes. Lower Radius is .5 and upper Radius is .1. The Bowl shape is .25 diameter bigger than the thru hole. I was asked to use off the shelf tooling to try to accomplish this task. Well I could make that work, but would be looking at 40 minutes a part to machine these features with 3 different tools in 3 different areas. 4 parts all share the same shapes. I stepped out and ordered custom tools to make this shape. I then used dynamic contour to cut this shape. I am now producing about 20 ra finish in about 3 minutes per shape. Over the life of the project I figure it saved about 31 minutes per part with the plan of running 20 to 40 a month for the next 20 years has helped the customer see some major cost reductions.

 

What I wanted to share was the power of Dynamic contour. I am cutting a bowl 2.75 deep to a 3" diameter. Like I said .5R on the lower part of the bowl and .1R on the upper. It is about 1.2 tall inside of this part. I did a .01 step over in my dynamic with a good radius to lead it in. I am running this at 4000 rpms in a 1.25 diameter cutter 3 flute at 40 imp. When I get a finished part I will post a pic, but finish is awesome. Run Time is great and I am using Dynamic to cut oring grooves and under cuts 5 or 10 times faster than traditional ways with Multi-pass or whatever I used in the pass. When I get some free time I will make a sample file up to share this process, but hopefully it is enough to get others trying this method if not being currently used.

 

Pay close attention to your max Radius. This controls your lead in and out for the undercut. Tight the area the less room you got, but make it to big the toolpath will fail without a warning. Play with it till it clears your wall. I also recommend using finish pass all in this one operation. Other than that enjoy kicking some runs times down.

 

Hopefully this is a helpful suggestion to others. Thanks for taking the time to read this topic if you got this far.

[crazy^millman]

I will add an enhancement request. Ability to have a lead in and lead out radius on Dynamic Contour. Needed in tight areas when using it for undercuts.

[GIZMO 21]

 

Hopefully this is a helpful suggestion to others. Thanks for taking the time to read this topic if you got this far.

Always a pleasure.